ITunes can't locate songs in my library.

It took me a while to point iTunes 11.0.2 (26) 64-bit in 10.8.3 to my existing itunes library that is also used by my 10.6.x system.  Once I did though I went to a playlist and clicked on the song and found that even though it updated my library files (Itunes Library and Itunes Library.xml) it did not actually scan the songs in the library because it couldn't locate the song.  I located the song and it asked me if I wanted it to use that info to find other lost songs which I said yes to.  It proceeded to not even find the rest of the songs in the same directory I had pointed it to.  Now I have about 4165 songs missing!  *** iTunes?!?!  I have NO MISSING SONGS under 10.6.x and I'm using the same library files and the  same library structure and everything.  IS there a way to do this other than repointing iTunes to the existing library?  Please help me or I will be forced to write iTunes off.  Which in my opinion is getting easy as the whole program is getting worse and worse from a cpl years ago.
Thanks in advance.
Paul

The problem of tracks becoming de-linked between iTunes and the music files in your iTunes music folder happens for different reasons - this seems to come up fairly commonly in this forum.
The solution can be to locate each song in the iTunes library, as you mentioned - or, but wait, before I get to that...
trouble finding the original track in your iTunes music folder? maybe look for it under compilations, or if not using the 'group compilations preference' then look in the folder under the songs artist name, but what song artist name iTunes uses depends on what you have in the metedata tag spot for album artist or song artist. Any varyation in artist name spelling, in the menu item 'get info' metadata for any selected individual track will cause iTunes to create that as a separate artist folder in the library, even names like 'various' or any difference at all (even the word 'the' can change where in your iTunes music folder a track gets placed by iTunes). You can try to use the finder function of find file (finder munu item outside of iTunes) to locate hard to find items.
Back to how to re-link any de-linked tracks .
There may be scripts that can help re-link de-linked music files - or, at least provide you a list of such files, Scripts are easy to install and use...
at Dougs Scripts, there is one called iTunes Track CPR that might work
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=itunestrackcpr
or, if you just want a list of de-linked tracks, go to
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/
and find the script called List MIA's, this will create a text file listing all de-linked tracks
if you review the thread at
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3633708
also the thread at
https://discussions.apple.com/message/17513078#17513078
you may find more insight into dealing with this kind of issue there, although some of that thread may not apply to your case, aspects of it might help.
Good luck.

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